Mortality

On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his memoir Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in Vanity Fair, he was suddenly deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Throughout his 18-month ordeal with esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with his eyes open. This clear-eyed, intellectually defiant, ironically witty account is pure Hitchens, as he describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us.

"Nothing sharpened Christopher Hitchens' mind like cancer. He wrote the best, most piercing, most clarifying prose of his career as he faced down the specter of his own demise. As he dealt with fatigue and nausea, with the anger, disgust and frustration that must accompany what he knew was a death sentence, Hitch poured it all into words as painfully honest as they were hilarious."—Sharon Waxman

"I have no doubt that Christopher Hitchens will have an afterlife. As one of the most original and provocative writers of his generation, his words will continue to mesmerize, incite, confound, and entertain."—Shmuley Boteach